


it's alright (the wild ones never die)

by choomchoom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Bodyguard, F/F, anode does not even remotely understand the concept of staying out of trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 09:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Lug is Anode's bodyguard. Anode thinks this is hilarious.For the tumblr prompt "AU where Lug is Anode's bodyguard"





	it's alright (the wild ones never die)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [not_whelmed_yet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/gifts).

> title is from five knives "wild ones" for all your Anode playlist needs 
> 
> thanks for the prompt Lynn! 
> 
> (warnings for non-graphic non-fatal gun violence and non-graphic injury)

“I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“We don’t send trainees off-planet without one.” Powershell had on a long-suffering look that Anode was, by now, quite used to seeing from her.

“I can take care of my –”

“Oh, just tell her.”

Anode choked off the rest of her protest as a familiar face stepped into her view. Lug was hiding a smile, and it was all Anode could do not to run to her and kiss her in front of her supervisor.

Powershell continued speaking. “It’s unorthodox, obviously, to allow anyone to be guarded by their conjunx, but with your history of traveling together, I saw no reason to object when Lug put in the application.”

Anode grinned. “This is going to be _awesome_.”

“Nothing’s _changed_, Anode, you’re still going to this workshop to learn about –”

“Sentio metallico carbon-dating, I know, I _know_,” she said. She tore her eyes away from Lug for a moment to nod at Powershell. “I can multitask.”

* * *

“So how did you become a bodyguard? Is there a tragic backstory?” Anode linked her arm with Lug’s and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you have to carry a gun?”

“Yes there’s a tragic backstory, and I’ll tell you all about it right after our first near-death experience together,” Lug said. She lowered her voice in turn. “As for the gun, hopefully you’ll never need to find out.”

Anode used their linked arms to draw her into a kiss. They’d taken a shuttle from Caminus to the nearest active spaceport, and now they were surrounded by a wider variety of people than Anode had seen since she’d started her internship.

“Mmph.” Lug broke away almost immediately. “We’re in public. I’m your _bodyguard_.”

“I know we were having fun with the bit, there, but what’s the point of spending time together if we can’t do what we want?”

“It’s not a bit, Anode. I’m getting paid to keep you safe.”

“The Camiens are too careful. Remember how we wandered around this segment of space for hundreds of years without anyone playing bodyguard?”

“Yes. We almost died thirty-one times.”

“You can’t have actually kept count.”

“Want to bet on that?”

Anode considered. “No.”

Anode had missed Lug’s vindicated half-smile. She wanted to kiss it. Lug slipped her hand into Anode’s and led Anode toward the passenger shuttle they were taking to the conference. “I’ll relax when we’re alone, okay? But the Camiens are worried that someone’s going to hurt you and” she lowered her voice into the joking persona once again. “I’d be a disgrace to my profession if I let that happen.”

* * *

Nobody had tried to kill Anode by the time they found their berths on the passenger shuttle, which was honestly a little disappointing. Anode knew that Lug wouldn’t want to hear, that, though, so instead of saying anything she kissed her, letting Lug push her against the wall and putting her hands everywhere she could, reviving her memories of Lug’s frame.

Lug made sure that both of them were strapped into their seats when the shuttle took off and gravity switched from planetary to artificial. Anode didn’t bother to argue, and was rewarded with most of two days all but plastered to Lug’s side, catching up on everything that hadn’t been important enough to waste vidcall minutes on, watching media that Lug had been saving for a time that Anode had a break from the Lighthouse, and making up their own new rules to some of the bizarre Camien board games that Anode had brought holos of.

Anode was insisting that spilling coolant on the holo, shutting it off mid-game, was a valid move, and Lug was laughing at her, when the lights went out.

Anode saw Lug lurch to her feet and Anode followed suit, looking around the room even though she was certain nothing in here had caused the issue.

There was a distant _boom_. Never a good sound on a spaceship.

A minute after that, the lights turned back on, as if nothing had ever happened.

“Do you think they’ll still pay you if we all die in a spacecraft explosion?” Anode asked after a few seconds of silence.

Lug elbowed her in the side. “Bad joke,” she grumbled, but her shoulders were already relaxing a bit now the immediate crisis seemed to be over.

A voice came over the speaker system. “We apologize for the disruption,” someone said blandly. “There was a mechanical failure in our engine block. Repair crews will be en route and should reach our location shortly. Our arrival at Seneen will be delayed by approximately eight standard hours.”

Too fucking chipper by _half_ for someone who ought to be apologizing, was Anode’s immediate impression. Being eight hours late to the course didn’t phase Anode – that just meant extra time to spend out here with Lug. But the way the lights had gone off first, and _then _the explosion…something was strange about this.

“Fancy a trip to the engine block?” Anode asked, already turning to go.

“_No_,” Lug said with surprising vitriol. It was enough protest to make Anode turn to her.

“You didn’t notice how the lights went off _before _the explosion? That’s what’d happen if you wanted to disable the alarm system by disrupting the electronics and then blow part of the engine up on purpose.”

“Or it could be any of a dozen other things. Either way, we’re here as passengers. It’s not our problem.”

“It’s our problem if someone on the ship is up to something,” Anode said. “Look, you’re my bodyguard, right? If someone did this on purpose, I could be in danger. All of us could. All I’m asking is that we _check_. You wouldn’t shirk on your bodyguard responsibilities, right?”

“That is so not how any of this works,” Lug said, but she was leaning forward now, shoulders squared toward the door.

“Glad you understand,” Anode said, and when she opened the door, Lug followed her out into the hallway.

The engine block was hidden behind a locked door, for an unusually pathetic definition of the word _locked_. It took Anode five minutes to build an override, and soon enough she was easing open the door, no alarms to speak of.

The engine room was larger than the equivalents Anode had spent time in over the years – she’d only ever helped out with the engine when it was just her and Lug traveling together. After a few minutes of scanning around, though, she was confident that she could have identified almost everything she was looking at.

It didn’t take that long to notice the problem. There was still smoke coming out of a hole in the piping where Anode suspected a distributor should have been.

It was the kind of thing that could _theoretically_ just happen, if passenger craft like this didn’t have dozens of redundancies to prevent it. However, the frayed remnants of a fuse that had obviously attached to an explosive, lying on the ground next to the busted distributor, told a different story entirely.

“What are you doing here?” It was the same voice from the announcement, _now _laced with more fear than it had been when announcing the “mechanical failure.”

“Just seeing if we can help,” Anode said, holding her hands up. Beside her, Lug followed suit. “We’ve done a lot of traveling, fixed our share of engines. I see that this one’s pretty busted, though.”

The alien in front of them was about Lug’s height. Their single eye went to the blackened remnants of the fuse on the ground.

And then their eye was on Anode. They’d followed her gaze to the evidence of their crime on the floor. “I just need eight hours,” the organic said. “I can’t work on this prison for another day. Eight hours to squirrel away valuables, just a thing or two from every piece of luggage, and I’ll be set for life. Won’t even hurt anyone – the company insures it. I’m so close to making it.” The organic raised a gun toward them.

Anode didn’t think, she just reacted. She was bigger than Lug and a shot that hit her instead of her conjunx was less likely to hit something important.

The shot went into her hip plating, with enough force to knock her to the ground. She barely got herself up on an elbow in time to hear the second shot go off.

Cold fear seized her spark before she heard the organic’s cry of anguish. “You shot me!” Their voice was shrill now.

“You shot my charge,” Lug said.

Anode managed to turn over and look up at Lug. She was holding a gun out in front of her like she’d been made for it, arms perfectly positioned and still with intent.

The door opened, then, and more attendants burst in. Lug dropped the gun with a clatter and put her hands in the air.

Anode and the organic were put on stretchers next to each other, giving her the opportunity to whisper, “You could have just cut us in on the goods,” before she was carted off to the ship’s medical bay.

* * *

Lug didn’t leave her side as the crew took her to the medical bay. The one doctor who happened to be on the ship took one look at Anode before his face solidified into pure panic, and Anode managed to convince him and the crewmembers fretting over her that she could fix herself. It wasn’t a bad wound, though she did break two pairs of the medical bay’s garbage tweezers trying to get the bullet out.

Lug didn’t leave, but she didn’t say anything. Eventually, once Anode was as patched up as she was going to get out here, she turned to Lug. “Cheer up. We caught a criminal!”

_Like we’re not criminals_ and a smile were the response Anode was hoping for, but Lug gave her neither. “You don’t get to tell me to cheer up,” Lug said. “I had one job.”

_That _was the sticking point? “Lug. Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’m fine. All that matters to me is that you weren’t hurt.”

“You don’t get it,” Lug said. “When you get hurt, it hurts me. Not just because I’m being paid to keep you safe. When you seek out danger, on purpose, for no reason…you’re risking yourself, and you’re accepting that. But I don’t have to. I don’t _want _to. You’re allowed to be chipper about it, and I’m allowed not to be.”

Anode took a moment to work through all that. She squeezed Lug’s hand once in acknowledgement before speaking. “Okay,” she said. “If it helps, I really am just fine.”

“I know,” Lug said. Her glum expression didn’t recede.

“You’re a great shot,” Anode tried. “You might have a future in bodyguarding.”

Finally, Lug cracked a smile, resting her cheek against Anode’s shoulder as she laughed. “Maybe I do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> many more words of anode/lug coming 8/16 for the tf big bang!


End file.
